I have 04 roadking with 30,000 miles. When should the chain tensioners be renewed.

 

It varies. Pull your cam cover and take a look.

 

Never. Replace 'em with gears.

 

I would check them now.

 

My dealer's response to that question was "when the performance drops and the top end gets noisy".

C#

 

I wouldnt put it off any longer. if you wait to start hearing noises its too late!

 

You dealer is either an idiot or wants to sell you a major rebuilt or new engine altogther. Waiting until "the performance drops" means that the pads are totally gone the chains are riding on metal, thus the slack throwing off your timing. The "top end gets noisy" means that the pads are gone and the pad material and metal shavings have taken out your oil pump, lifters, and likely everything else internal.

 

Thank you all for your input. One other thing what gear cam can I go to and stay stock

 

Umm... I don't entirely disagree with the dealer on this one. Of course, how sensitive your ear is and how much experience around engines you have would dtermine if you noticed it when the shoes are nearly gone but the chain hasn't been polished yet. I don't think that the shoe material would have any effect on the engine at all... because you are putting little bits of it in your engine every time you ride.

His point was that no matter what you do, short of replacing the cams with gear driven cams, you can't predict when they will go. You can take them apart but I have heard that you need to take them all the way out because you can't tell by just looking at the outer shoe.

I have a two year warranty on my bike. I will have just about 26k on the bike, then. 23 months out, I intend to replace my cams with gear driven cams. If it fails before then, I intend to make my dealer's life miserable until I get them replaced with gear driven cams under warranty.

That's the plan I have, anyway...

I'm a big Harley fan, but they sure make some brain dead decisions just to save a buck here and there. Sometimes when I hear crap about metrics from Harley riders I have to bite my tongue really hard or I would start a good bar fight.

C#

 

Andrews will cut you a stock cam if you want it. But, why? You are spending your money, you might as well get a little more power out of it. You can bolt in a Andrews 21 or 26 with little or no tuning and still get a good amount of performance gain.